Balance and Kindness

Sometimes at the beginning of a yoga class, the teacher will ask you to set an intention for the class. An intention is a word or goal or reason why you showed up today…and it’s usually something that you want to connect more deeply to. It could be a person who needs some good vibes, or an element you need to be more present in your own life…really anything you want to put energy toward.

Often times when I go to yoga, it’s because I feel out of whack. It’s not necessarily about stress, but when life spins me up, i’ve found yoga a way to hit reset. I first discovered it when I was an Analyst in investment banking right out of college. My days and nights were blurring together, I was dreaming in excel spreadsheets, and I found this studio on my walk from the subway to the office that I decided to stop into one day. While my job owned me 23 hours a day, yoga became an hour that was free of any context other than my mind and my body working together, with complete inward focus.

These days I go to yoga about once a week…sometimes less, but always when I am feeling like I need to reconnect. Last night, I set two intentions for my class: Balance and Kindness.

Balance is something I am always seeking. After an 8 hour hike up the Algonquin and Iriqous high peaks of the Adirondacks, my body was hurting and in need of adjustment and rebalancing…but also during this period of professional evolution…I sought to level my head and find mental balance as well.

Kindness, on the other hand, is not something I think about on a daily basis. It’s a value that I admire, and one that I aspire to…but one that…for me…can sometimes fall by the wayside in the name of efficiency, shrewd decision making, and rational execution. Of course, I’m rarely mean…but true kindness is something that I’d like to be higher up in my emotional stack.

I’ve reflected quite a bit on the last year and half of Wildcard…it was a period with some ups, but a lot of downs…it was highly stressful and as I look back on some of my conversations with friends, teammates, and others…i find myself wishing that I had better maintained my kindness through it all. It’s easier to see it when you step away, and easy to lose it when your thrown back into the next melee…but nonetheless, it’s a value I thought worthy of my intention last night.

P.S. I’ve been infrequent in my blogposts lately…but i’ve recommitted to writing regularly…so even though I feel that in today’s low attention world, people don’t really take the time to read long form blogposts…it’s how I like to organize my thinking…so I’m gonna keep doing it.

About

I’m a NYC based investor and entrepreneur. I think there is one metric that can be used to measure the value of a human life and that’s impact. How did you change things? How many people did you touch? How different is the world because you lived in it and how positive was the change that you affected? (p.s. i don’t use spell check…deal with it) You can email me at Jordan.Cooper@gmail.com